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Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Spring is in the Air bloghop

I love New England. Because of my husband's career in the US Coast Guard, we move a lot. We've lived from Kittery, Maine to Yorktown, Virginia. Fortunately all our moves have been on the East Coast. Then again, the Coast Guard tends to guard the coast.

When I started The Mark of Abel, I was living in Delaware and missing New England something fierce. I decided to set the book there. At first, I set it during the fall. My husband remarked that all books set in New England happen during the fall. As I was writing, I realized I needed to move the book to right before Spring break.

In New England, spring means one thing--baseball. Even the heroine gets swept up in Red Sox fever.

Excerpt:

Traffic on Storrow Drive was a nightmare. Janie laughed. Nightmares were precisely why she was caught in traffic hell. Unfortunately, she must travel through this to reach her salvation, something beautiful to erase the afterimages of her night terrors. She cursed that she needed to pass Fenway Park to get to the Museum of Fine Arts. A few more miles and she’d be cocooned in soothing blues of the Madonna. Each car inched along as if pulled by the one in front, all united by a common purpose proudly emblazoned on their bumpers. Go Red Sox.

She’d never felt so alone.

She didn’t even know the rules of the national pastime. Maybe she should change that. Then she could talk to strangers waiting in line. There was something about a green monster who ate balls. That would be interesting to paint. Then again, if she did, the monster would have blood dripping from his fangs. That wasn’t exactly kid-friendly.

“How ’bout the Sox?” she said to her empty car. She sighed.

The air was electric. She could come up with something special to paint here. There were rarely people in her paintings. Maybe that was her problem. She’d always felt removed from the people around her. The secret to healing her broken soul wasn’t communion with God, but communion with her fellow man. That’s what art gave her. She felt connected to the long dead artist. What she needed was to connect with the living.

On the sidewalk to the left of her car, a small girl about three-years-old bounced on her father’s shoulders. Her hat was too large and fell over her eyes. With an iron grip on her father’s chin with one hand, she pushed it up. It fell again. Janie wiped away a tear. It had been decades since she had been her father’s Moonbeam.

To her right, happy couples strode toward the stadium. Their joy was so palpable, she could feel it through the closed window. She rolled it down and fragments of conversation floated to her. None if it made sense, talks about winning a pennant or someone being sent down to the minors or a designated hitter, whatever that was. If she was going to become a fan, she needed to learn a new language. She wondered if tickets were available. With all these people, probably not.

Blurb/Backcover copy:

Lucifer is fed up with humanity. He created hell to deter evil, but man’s inhumanity is only escalating. He just wants to return home to heaven, but ever since that little problem in the Garden of Eden, the Pearly Gates remain firmly shut to him. It doesn’t help that he’s the first vampire, an abomination in God’s sight.

Fortunately, two thousand years ago Lucifer’s estranged brother, Jesus, gave him a prophecy. To fulfill it, all Lucifer has to do is find the right artist, study her artwork and the path back to heaven will be revealed. The artist even bears a symbol so he knows who she is. Too bad she is murdered every time he finds her.

Janie’s a frustrated artist and college art teacher who wants two things—a guy she can show her paintings to and a night without nightmares. Each nightmare plagues her until she paints it. She doesn’t realize these paintings are key to unlocking her destiny, one that could redeem the original fallen angel.

One lucky commenter will win a copy of The Mark of Abel and be entered into the hop's grand prize drawing for a pack of books from XOXO Publishing. You must include your email address to be eligible.

Make sure you visit other stops on this hop for learn about more fabulous books and for more chances to win. There is a prize at every stop.

Also, I am currently involved in a uber-massive virtual book tour for The Mark of Abel. Feel free to join me at any of my stops. The Grand Prize for the tour is a $50 Amazon Gift Card. Click on the graphic below and it will take you to the tour page. Thank you for stopping by.

Thanks for the giveaway! Spring is in the air, but unfortunately living in Upstate NY, it is not even close to arriving. It snowed again at my house just tonight. I'm looking forward to the warm weather and longer days though. Spring is the time of love and my favorite romance novel is entitled "Outlander" by Diana Gabaldon. It's not strictly a romance novel as it's found in the literature section of a bookstore, but it has strong romantic elements. Jamie Fraser is my favorite romantic hero as he's strong, sensitive, honorable and slightly flawed. Sometimes his pride gets in the way of making the right decision, but in the end, he'd do anything for Claire. I love this giveaway hop! And, I plan to keep on hopping!

Wow. "The Mark of Abel" sounds brilliant. I read the excerpt and the blurb and then headed over to Amazon to read a bit more (it left me wanting more with the above so I went there to check it out) and it's on my "to read must have I need this it's so great sounding it's caused a total butchering of the English language as I am not talking and speaking in excited run-on sentences because it sounds so very good" list. In other words, it really sounds like a great book and I really enjoyed the flow of the words and the writing style.

Hope spring has found you a bit. Here in northeastern PA I think that perhaps it is trying to get here. That last bad snow that came through managed to go completely around (it really looked like it circled)where I am and hit most other parts of PA and pretty much every other state I think, but right here we didn't get anything but cold. Of course, we've had flurries every single day but there are actually patches of grass between the snow now!

Thanks for the chance to enter the giveaway and happy spring one and all!!

The hardest thing when he went out to sea (he's been on two different cutters) was the inconsistency of everything. It took a few weeks to adjust to him being home after he returned, a few weeks to adjust to him being gone and when it got time for him to ship out again, it was the same disruption. This is out last duty station and fortunately he's only gone a max of 3 weeks unless it's ANOTHER school out in California.